August is hot from the touch of an ardent sun,
Lolling and still in fields and windless places;
Idle all day like a woman with hair undone,
Her feet unshod, her bosom bare of laces.
All her passionate beauty and strength are here,
Complete, and grown to power beyond disguising.
Her flying days are short as the last draw near
And wane, September anear on wings uprising.
Hotter glow her burning eyes and harsh
Where the scythe has bared the grassy slopes and meadows;
On the breathless sea, and the stifled miles of marsh
Where spruce and willow lose the cool of shadows.
Yet the dewy nights are sweet; and the lagging dawn
Awakes to the ringing scythe, like a heavy sleeper;
And the dyke-ward drift of the tide with the marsh-hay mown,
Drives off the cranes from the hidden creeks grown deeper.
As a tired troop of horses march in sleep
When the weary riders hear not the sounding sabres;
So comes the tide with the flooding march of the deep,
Across the marshes to the winding rivers.
And a ship like a gull swings off the anchoring clay,
And drifts with the fisher-craft from the nearer offing;
While the inshore flight of the gulls on the edge of day
Startles the silent flats with joyless laughing.
As the sea drifts in the toilers deep in the tide
Gather the grass, as fishermen drag the meshes—
Hunters surrounding the game on every side,
Till the spoil is captive in the binding leashes.
Trumpet-like the call of the herds long-blown
Wafts mellow and far to the drowse of the sense’s hearing;
The perfumes fresh from the marshy meadows flown
Bring taste of the tide whose overflow is nearing.
Still the meadows are the mower has shorn,
Where thistles stood, and perfumes fled from the flowers
And the stubble stark where the summer’s yield was borne
Now seemeth dead to the sun and the touch of showers.
From the empty barns have the hollow echoes fled;
The lofts are loaded deep with the grassy sweetness.
The grain ungarnered and ripe swings lazy head,
And all the corn is bursting with its greatness.
Leaning hay-ricks dark rise everywhere
Across the meadows and the waters looming.
The higher tides flood the marshes unaware,
Among strange ways and newer channels roaming.
September comes to the bare burnt places, and cools
With gentle touch and breath, a glad new-comer;
Refreshing the languorous lakes and the dying pools
Before the advent of the Indian summer.
Fragrant are the orchards ripe of fruit,
And fairest the flowers of September-bringing.
Songsters seem to be wording a second suit,
So eager and so joyful in their singing.
Primroses yet are blown, and the thistle abloom,
The August-flower bright from the bud its month gone over;
Asters smile near the rushes’ damp and gloom;
A sweetness lingers near the thrifty clover.
The season will not die though all the dykes
Seemed to the roots destroyed by the ruthless mower:
Where now the cattle graze, and the marsh-hawk strikes,
Are the fields of aftermath of the secret sower.
(John Frederic Herbin)
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Based on Topics: Night Poems, Sadness Poems, Death & Dying Poems, Sense & Perception Poems, Place Poems, Flowers Poems, Sleep Poems, Woman Poems, Summer Poems, Secrets Poems, Singing PoemsBased on Keywords: abloom, new-comer, anchoring, disguising, lofts, wording, leashes, ungarnered, trumpet-like, inshore, marsh-hawk